Hemlock Bay

No, she’d just buy a small sampler set of pens and pen points, inexpensive ones because it didn’t really matter. Maybe she’d get a Speedball cartooning set, just like the one her folks had given her when she’d wanted to try cartooning so many years before. Those pens would still feel familiar in her hand. And a bottle of India ink, some standard-size, twenty-pound typing paper, durable paper that would last, no matter how many times it was shoved into envelopes or worked on by her and the editors. Yes, just some nice bond paper, not more than a hundred sheets. Usually, since she did political cartoons, she used strips of paper cut from larger sheets of special artist paper, thicker than a postcard—bristol board, it was called, well suited for brushwork. And one bottle of Liquid Paper. She could just see herself—not more than an hour from now—drawing those sharp, pale lines that would become the man of the hour, Senator No Wrinkles Remus, the soon-to-be president of the U.S., from that fine state of West Dementia, where the good senator has managed to divide his state into halves, to conduct the ultimate experiment with gun control. One half of the state has complete gun control, as strict as in England; the other half of West Dementia has no gun control at all. He gives an impassioned speech to the state legislature, with the blessing of the governor, whom he’s blackmailed for taking money from a contractor who is also his nephew: “One year, that’s all we ask,” Remus says, waving his arms to embrace all of them. “Just one year and we’ll know once and for all what the answer is.”
    And what happens in the west of West Dementia is that criminals auction off areas to one another since civilians aren’t allowed to own any device that shoots a bullet out of a barrel. Criminals break-and-enter at their leisure, whenever the spirit moves them. Houses, banks, gas stations, 7-Elevens, nothing is safe.
    In east West Dementia, every sort of gun abounds, from sleek pistols that fire one round a minute to behemoths that kick out eight hundred zillion rounds a second. There are simply no limits at all. Because of the endless supply, guns are really cheap. What happens surprises everyone: robbery stats go down nearly seventy percent after a good dozen would-be robbers are killed breaking in—to homes, banks, filling stations, 7-Elevens.
    On the other side of it, killing abounds. Everything that moves, and doesn’t move, gets shot—deer, rabbits, cars, people. Some people even take to target-shooting in the rivers. Many trout, it is said, die from gunshot wounds.
    There are rumors of payoffs from both the National Rifle Association and the Mafia to No Wrinkles Remus, but like his name, no matter what he does—or people believe he does—that face of his remains smooth and absolutely trustworthy.
    She was grinning like a madwoman. She rubbed her hands together. She wanted to draw No Wrinkles Remus —now, right this minute, as soon as she could get a pen between her fingers. She didn’t need a drawing table, the small circular Victorian table in her room would be perfect. The sun was coming in at exactly the right angle.
    She just didn’t want to wait. Lily grabbed her purse, her leather jacket, and headed out of the bed-and-breakfast. Mrs. Blade, standing behind the small counter downstairs, waved her on. Lily didn’t know Eureka well, but she knew to go to Wallace Street. A whole bunch of artists lived over in the waterfront section of town, and a couple of them ran art supply stores.
    The day was cloudy, nearly cold enough to see your breath, a chilly breeze swirling about in the fallen autumn leaves that strengthened the salty ocean taste when you breathed in. She managed to snag a taxi across the street that was letting off an old man in front of an apartment building.
    The driver was Ukrainian, had lived in Eureka for six years, and his high-schooler son liked to doodle, even on toilet paper, he said, which made you wonder what sort of poisoning you could get using that toilet paper. He knew just where to go.
    It was Sol Arthur’s art supply shop. She was in and out in thirty minutes, smiling from ear to ear as she shifted the wrapped packages in her arms. She had maybe eleven dollars left in her purse—goodness, eleven whole dollars left in the world. She wondered what had happened to her credit cards. She would ask Dillon to deal with it.
    She stood on the curb looking up and down the